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The second group of UAMS employees on the steps of the Royal Marsden Hospital.

UAMS Clinical Informatics Team Goes Overseas to Share Expertise in Streamlining Patient Care

June 16, 2023 | The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS)’ Clinical Informatics team recently visited England to help the Royal Marsden Hospital in London transition to the Epic electronic medical record system.

Ashleigh Kathiresan, MS.Ed., director of Clinical Informatics at UAMS, said the specialty cancer treatment hospital for adult patients first reached out to Arkansas Children’s, which put them in touch with Joseph Sanford, M.D., associate vice chancellor and chief clinical informatics officer at UAMS as well as director for the Institute of Digital Health & Innovation, for on-site support during its implementation of Epic.

Kathiresan said the Clinical Informatics team attends annual conferences for Epic, the provider of the health care software that UAMS uses, and through networking at those conferences has come to be known as a knowledgeable source of information on implementing the system.

In early 2021, UAMS converted its eight regional campuses across the state to Epic, connecting them to the system that had been in place at UAMS’ main campus and its clinics for about eight years. This allowed more than 65,000 patients in Arkansas to have better access to seamless care.

Epic allows for the streamlined flow of clinical information across a fully integrated UAMS Health system, making records more accessible for providers across the network and transferrable for patients anywhere in the system.

Kathiresan said that altogether, 16 members of the UAMS Health Clinical Informatics team went to London over a two-week period in March to share their diverse expertise with Royal Marsden doctors, nurses and administrators, as well as a group from Ireland. The trips and all accommodations were organized and funded by Royal Marsden.

Half of the team went the week of March 20-24 and the other half visited from March 27-31. Kathiresan said that on each day, the UAMS team members on the ground would meet for breakfast before walking from their hotel to the nearby hospital and then branching off to their assigned areas to spend a full day helping the new Epic users familiarize themselves with the software and answering questions.

“It was a big change for them,” Kathiresan said, referring to the Royal Marsden employees. “There was a lot of anxiety, especially because they want to be able to stand before patients and use the system while looking and feeling very confident. But it wasn’t just about us helping them. We got some really great information, too. For example, we got to see some new features that will come with the latest version of Epic, when it’s time for us to update. We now better understand how the new features will affect our clinicians, and how we can best prepare them for the updates.”

The UAMS employees included several principle training specialists as well as Sanford; Brett Bailey, Pharm.D., an assistant professor of pharmacy and one of UAMS’ associate chief clinical informatics officers; Lyn Gardner, RN, a nurse informaticist; and David Nelson, MD, a physician informaticist. Despite the range of expertise in the UAMS team, Kathiresan said she thinks the real reason the recipients of the training seemed especially grateful was “because of the soft skills we brought.”

Kathiresan, for example, is a former first-grade teacher who explains complex subjects in an understandable way while putting her students at ease and fomenting enthusiasm. Jeff Johnson, RN, one of the principle trainers, is a former banking software training project manager whose background also includes nursing in Med Surg, cardiology, ICU and pre-procedure areas. Kodi Muse, RN, another principle trainer, is a former clinical service manager for the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute and a former patient care manager in UAMS’ Department of Pediatrics.

“The team we brought was just so positive and experienced,” Kathiresan said.

In their down time, she said, the UAMS team members picked up additional knowledge unique to Great Britain, such as how to travel on the “Tube” or how to make a perfect cup of English Breakfast tea.

“We at UAMS have been asked to train Epic users at other hospitals,” she said, “so we have gotten really good at helping people go live. A lot of them didn’t understand at first how Epic is going to make them more efficient, but when you show them how to use it so it’s relevant to them, their brains begin making a lot of connections. One of the groups that Dr. Chad Taylor was assigned to train went from being unhappy about the switch to chanting, ‘We love Epic!’”

“We felt appreciated, knowing that the knowledge we shared will make an impact on their patients, but I also truly feel like it was a life-changing experience for me,” she said.

Clinical informatics is a relatively new field whose professionals serve as a bridge between the practice of medicine and the advances of the digital age, with the purpose of improving health outcomes by applying the latest technological advances.

Epic is a software company headquartered in Wisconsin that has grown over the years from being a clinical database to the nation’s leading provider of integrated health care software.